Nationals Concludes - Champions and Teams Named

The U.S. National Aerobatic Championships came to a formal close on Friday evening, September 29th, with ceremonies held at the EAA Aviation Museum's Founder's Wing in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The 2017 U.S. National Aerobatic Champion is Rob Holland. Rob flew his MXS-RH to victory shortly after returning from the FAI World Aerobatic Championships in South Africa earlier this month. He also won the Four Minute Freestyle event which is a separate trophy contest at the end of the Nationals. Rob was presented the Mike Murphy Cup as National Champion. This was his 7th win of the title and as a surprise, the daughters of Leo Loudenslager (Carolyn and Kelly) flew in to help present the trophy to Rob. Leo was the only other American pilot to win the championship seven times.

A new U.S. Advanced Aerobatic Team was also named at the Nationals. These pilots will now turn their attention to competing at the World Advanced Aerobatic Championships to be held in Romania in August 2018. Pilots on the Team are Aaron McCartan (new U.S. Advanced National Champion and team captain), A.J. Wilder, John Wacker, Marty Flournoy, Matt Dunfee, Stan Moye, Brent Smith, Michael Lents, and alternate pilots Angelo Cillaroto and Mark Fullerton.

Full results of the event can be found at https://www.iac.org/files/nationals-results/2017/indexpage.htm which includes results from all 8 categories of flying. Altogether, 92 pilots competed in the Nationals and 234 contest flights were evaluated by the boards of judges. The largest category was Advanced Power with 25 pilots. A third of the competitor group were first-time competitors at the Nationals due to its re-location from Texas to Wisconsin.